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during their shifts – sometimes apparently in deep sleep, sometimes wide awake and bored, while at other
times apparently addressing the camera directly and interacting with Calle (see figures 1 and 2 above).
Importantly, as Macel points out, Calle regularly ‘adopts the style of the “report” – complete with facts, precise
times, and so on – to be written up.’ (p. 21) In The Sleepers, examples of this are plentiful as Calle gives details
relating to the activities of the participants: ‘They fall asleep at 1 a.m.’ (1996, p. 39); 22 and also to her own
activities as she directs proceedings: ‘I photograph her often during the night. She changes position but doesn’t
open her eyes. At 9 I awaken her while taking a picture’ (1996, p. 32). 23 This matter-of-fact style hints at the
importance of surveillance in Calle’s work; it relates to the sense of control that she typically wants to have over
her subjects. Despite the absurdity of the circumstances, it is not the remarkable or the spectacular that is being
monitored here, but the ordinary. Each report begins with the sleeper’s number in the sequence; and we are
almost always given an indication as to Calle’s familiarity with the individual(s) depicted: ‘I know her’; ‘I don’t
know him’; ‘he’s my brother’; ‘she’s my mother.’
Although the text does not correspond directly with specific photographs to offer a blow-by-blow account of
each moment, it is still true to say that without the text, the photographs would make very little sense. This is
why I invoke lamination and the effects (or meanings) it is capable of producing. The essential and initial effect
is association as photos and texts are brought into relations of juxtaposition, creating a productive tension.
Another effect of lamination is narrative, which, in successful cases, builds gradually as the texts and the
photographs enter into dialogue with each other. Accordingly, in The Sleepers, we have a situation in which
both media collaborate with each other, lending to and borrowing from one another, offering their unique
effects and compensating for the limitations of each. The text establishes and explains the game, and helps to
carry the narrative forward; for their part, the photographs give the reader a visual insight into the events. The
result is a sequential narrative, a substantive lamination. A final effect of lamination is memory; a record is a
kind of memory, often a physical kind, which attests – or claims to attest – to the actuality of some or other
event. Despite this, importantly, it should be noted that ‘truth’ is not necessarily an effect of lamination.
Lamination is mainly concerned with meaning-making, how it is produced, how it is built, conveyed, altered,
interpreted, and preserved; it is not concerned with ‘the truth’ of things per se. And yet, the use of photographs
in Calle’s work acts as a particularly powerful and persuasive form of ‘evidence,’ corroborating the report-like
script. This is a process about which I shall say more below.
Given Calle’s aim to maintain her bedroom as an occupied space over a given period of time, she had each of her
guests formally ‘receive’ the succeeding guests at the change of each shift. This is recorded photographically as
we see new and old guests greeting each other by shaking hands and often conversing. For its part, the text
announces the arrival and the departure of the guests in each case. Analysing the sequences, we find ourselves
oscillating between the texts and photographs in order to keep track of who the sleeper is, what their number is
in the sequence, whether they fell asleep or not, what time they fell asleep and for how long, how they behaved
while asleep or awake, and so on. With her textual reports, Calle provides details on all of these points.
The textual descriptions and photographic evidence therefore become part of a continuous chain of
representation (orderly and from left to right and top-down, just like the structure of written forms of Western
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